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Celebration [imdb] [viff] Dir: Thomas Vinterberg Country: Denmark

Watching this was like eating a meal at a new restaurant while the seven dwarves are busily kicking your head. It's impossible to tell how good the food is because you're preoccupied with those dwarves attacking your head.

This film was a video. First complaint. It looked awful, like the difference between a bad colour photocopy and an original 35mm print. Probably DV or maybe Hi8- good video, but video nonetheless. Ugh. Due to the style used (more on that in a moment), they had to use very lightweight cameras, so video was the only answer. Very unfortunate.

Second complaint. If it weren't for the subtitles, I would have shut my eyes for most of this film. I don't mind a moving camera- often I prefer it- but I've seen home videos that are more stable than this thing. Bounce bounce swish bob pan pan bounce swish.. ugh- I was getting seasick. And the focus! Yow! Don't even get me started there. My cheap little Sony 8mm Handycam has a better auto-focus. Yeah, yeah, it fit the style of the movie, but there's a line between making the audience feel distanced from the story and making the audience feel nauseous and wanting to puke all over the story.

So! The story itself was pretty good. Whole family gets together for a 60th birthday party. Chaos ensues. Without giving too much away, the father (birthday boy) is portrayed as not as nice a person as we'd originally thought- or is it all made up? Good uncertainty there. But, as I said, I was too preoccupied trying to see through the style that even a brilliant film shot that way would be headache-inducing.

John and Jo liked it, however. I hope John will post something in here about it, I remember him saying that it was one of the few fest films that actually affected him emotionally. It affected me physically.